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With Cinderella Man, Thomas Newman seamlessly incorporates authentic popular melodies from the Great Depression era with an orchestral score that recalls the hopeless, yet optimistic mood of that time in America. For instance, two vintage tracks from the 1930’s “Shim-Me-Sha-Wobble” and “Tillie’s Downtown Now” are upbeat and ring of possibility, while “Change of Fortune” echoes the helpless feeling of a broken man who has hit rock bottom.
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Jim Braddock rose from obscurity to become a household hero in the 1930s, but by the end of the century, his story of remarkable courage and devotion had nearly been lost. Yet for those working in the world of sports and sports journalism, particularly boxing, the legend he created continued to win fans and devotees among many who happened upon the archival press coverage of the fighter and his rise-to-fame matches.
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“In all the history of the boxing game, you’ll find no human interest story to compare with the life narrative of James J. Braddock.”
—Damon Runyon (1936)
In the middle of the Great Depression, when an America in the grips of a devastating economic downturn was nearly brought to its knees, there came along a most unlikely hero who had crowds cheering on their feet — as he proved just how hard a man would fight to win a second chance for his family and himself.
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With Cinderella Man, Thomas Newman seamlessly incorporates authentic popular melodies from the Great Depression era with an orchestral score that recalls the hopeless, yet optimistic mood of that time in America. For instance, two vintage tracks from the 1930’s “Shim-Me-Sha-Wobble” and “Tillie’s Downtown Now” are upbeat and ring of possibility, while “Change of Fortune” echoes the helpless feeling of a broken man who has hit rock bottom. Providing a touch of whimsy, actor Paul Giamatti is briefly featured whistling “Londonderry Air” on the album. The tune was lifted straight from the film during the quiet moments before Braddock’s championship fight. Newman’s score sets the mood perfectly, giving the listener a sense of how the story evolves through this affecting music. Note by note the music complements the film beautifully and will speak to everyone's desire to overcome the obstacles life has to offer.
Moving effortlessly from drama (The Road to Perdition, The Shawshank Redemption) to sharp satire (The Player) to period classics (Little Women) and animation (Finding Nemo), composer Thomas Newman (Music by) is building on an amazing family tradition in Hollywood with a varied and award-winning body of work. Newman has received a total of seven Oscar® nominations for his film work; he was the only double nominee in 1994’s Oscar® race, receiving two nominations — for Little Women and The Shawshank Redemption. He received his third nomination the following year for his score in Diane Keaton’s offbeat comedy Unstrung Heroes.
Newman received his most recent Academy Award® nomination for his deliciously evil score for director Brad Silberling’s Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events. Prior to that, he was nominated for his work for the blockbuster animated hit Finding Nemo and the acclaimed drama from director Sam Mendes, Road to Perdition. In 2001 his work was featured in the Oscar®-nominated Best Picture In the Bedroom.
In 1999, Newman created two memorable and unique scores for very different films: The Green Mile (his second collaboration with director Frank Darabont), a thriller based on the Stephen King novel; and the Oscar®-winning American Beauty, which earned him his fourth Academy nomination for Best Score. He won both the Grammy (Best Soundtrack) and the BAFTA (Anthony Asquith Award for Achievement in Film Music) for his work on that film.
His list of past projects also includes the critically acclaimed HBO production of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Angels in America, directed by Mike Nichols. Newman was also honored with an Emmy for “Outstanding Main Title Theme Music” for his quirky theme for HBO’s award-winning drama Six Feet Under.
His additional scores include Robert Altman’s The Player; Jon Avnet’s Fried Green Tomatoes and Up Close & Personal; Gillian Armstrong’s Oscar and Lucinda; Ron Howard’s Gung Ho; Susan Seidelman’s Desperately Seeking Susan; Joel Schumacher’s The Lost Boys; Martin Brest’s Scent of a Woman; Robert Redford’s The Horse Whisperer; Michael Tolkin’s The Rapture; John Turtletaub’s Phenomenon; Milos Forman’s The People Vs. Larry Flynt; Costa-Gavras’ Mad City; Steven Soderbergh’s Erin Brockovich; D.J. Caruso’s The Salton Sea; Peter Kosminsky’s White Oleander; and the acclaimed telefilm Citizen Cohn.
His upcoming projects include Sam Mendes’ Jarhead, the adaptation of Marine Anthony Swofford’s bracing memoir that took readers into his disorienting firsthand experience in the Gulf War.
Thomas is the youngest son of the legendary nine-time Oscar®-winner Alfred Newman, musical director of 20th Century Fox responsible for overseeing or writing all of the music created for over 200 Fox films, including such classics as Wuthering Heights and All About Eve. Alfred’s brother Lionel succeeded him as Fox music director, winning an Oscar® for Hello, Dolly!. Thomas’ cousin, Randy Newman, has also achieved fame in both pop music and film scoring and brother David is also a busy film composer.
As a child, Newman took basic music and piano studies, following that with study in composition and orchestration at USC and completing his academic work at Yale. Mentor Stephen Sondheim, who was deeply impressed with Newman’s originality, championed one of the young composer’s earliest works, the musical theater piece Three Mean Fairy Tales, which received a workshop production. Newman also won the support of a young New York casting agent, who would emerge as one of Hollywood’s top film producers—Scott Rudin, who brought Newman aboard director James Foley’s 1984 film Reckless as a musical assistant. Newman’s initiative on the project soon elevated him to the position of the movie’s composer, and at age 29, he had successfully scored his first film.
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Jim Braddock rose from obscurity to become a household hero in the 1930s, but by the end of the century, his story of remarkable courage and devotion had nearly been lost. Yet for those working in the world of sports and sports journalism, particularly boxing, the legend he created continued to win fans and devotees among many who happened upon the archival press coverage of the fighter and his rise-to-fame matches.
Longtime sports and boxing fan Cliff Hollingsworth (producer) was one of those touched by Braddock’s story and felt the man’s driving battle to provide for his family (and unanticipated fame that resulted from his upset matches) was a great tale deserving of a big screen adaptation. Beyond the simple sports victory lay a larger tale of personal triumphs that become the stuff of dreams.
Another longtime boxing fan who became committed to telling Braddock’s story once he heard the gripping details of the boxer’s transformation into the Cinderella Man was actor Russell Crowe. Crowe was so deeply moved by Braddock’s journey—from a man on the street trying to keep his beloved family from the clutches of poverty to an invincible sports champion and hero of the common person—that he devoted himself to bringing it to the screen.
Crowe is also responsible for bringing on board Oscar winning director Ron Howard.
Crowe and Howard got to know each other better while working on A Beautiful Mind, Crowe gave Ron a copy of the script…and the director, who had long been interested in a film set during the Great Depression, also felt that the Jim Braddock story addressed a lot of the themes that continue to resonate with him. Like Crowe, Howard was intrigued not only by Braddock’s comeback-of-all-sports-comebacks, but even more so by his place in the pantheon of folk heroes who seem to reveal something vital about America’s national character.
At the time Howard became aware of the project through Crowe, he was also informed of Zellweger’s longstanding attraction to the role of Mae. The actress had indeed been tracking the evolution of the project even before filmmaker participation had been cemented.
The character of Mae had became especially meaningful to Zellweger because she was such a strong, opinionated yet truly devoted wife in a time when many women didn’t have a voice at allThe intense interest of both accomplished and acclaimed performers only added to the filmmaker’s zeal to take on the film. Telling the story of a man who really existed in a time most Americas think they know posed challenges to Howard and his team. Yet for the director and director of photography, Salvatore Totino, there lay a simple dictum. Totino relates, “Ron wanted the film to have real grit to it and real sense of life. So we were very focused on making the audience feel they are part of the fights, as well as immersed in the New York City of the 1920s and ‘30s.” In addition to the research and preparation for embodying the character of Braddock, Crowe would need to undergo a great deal of physical training to portray a man who possessed not only the courage but the physical prowess and pugilistic skills to take on the greatest fighters of his time. Crowe began the process by immersing himself in the archives of photographs and film reels that still exist of Braddock in his fighting heyday. He spent hours meticulously analyzing the fighter’s every movement and facial expressions in the ring, dissecting his character’s uncanny drive and persistence from the outside in.
At the same time, Crowe also began to study the art of boxing—the sport known as “the sweet science” for its multifaceted mix of grace, grit and strategy — with trainer Angelo Dundee, who for 21 years trained the greatest champion of them all, Muhammad Ali.
Joining Crowe and Zellweger in bringing the core of Jim Braddock’s story to life are a group of lauded actors in key supporting roles, headed by Paul Giamatti, who won over critics and audiences with his performances in American Splendor and Sideways; Craig Bierko, Bruce McGill and Paddy Considine fill the roster.
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“In all the history of the boxing game, you’ll find no human interest story to compare with the life narrative of James J. Braddock.”
—Damon Runyon (1936)
In the middle of the Great Depression, when an America in the grips of a devastating economic downturn was nearly brought to its knees, there came along a most unlikely hero who had crowds cheering on their feet — as he proved just how hard a man would fight to win a second chance for his family and himself.
That common-man hero was James J. Braddock — a.k.a.. the “Cinderella Man” — who was to become one of the most surprising and inspirational sports legends in history. By the early 1930s, the impoverished ex-prizefighter was seemingly as broken-down, beaten-up and out-of-luck as much of the rest of the American populace. Like so many others, Braddock had hit rock bottom. His career appeared to be finished, he was unable to pay the bills, the only thing that really mattered to him — his family — was in danger, and he was even forced to go on Public Relief. But deep inside, Jim Braddock never relinquished his determination. Driven by love, honor and an incredible dose of grit, he willed an impossible dream to come true.
In a last-chance bid to help his family, Braddock returned to the ring. No one thought he had a shot. In bout after bout, the talk was that poor Jim Braddock was criminally out-matched and perilously in over his head. Except that Braddock, fueled by something beyond mere competition, kept winning. Suddenly, the ordinary working man who couldn’t get a job became the mythic athlete who could not lose. Carrying the hopes and dreams of the disenfranchised on his shoulders, Braddock rocketed through the ranks, until this underdog who defied all the odds chose to do the unthinkable: take on the heavyweight champ of the world, the unstoppable Max Baer, renowned for having killed two men in the ring.
With Cinderella Man, an Academy Award®-winning team—comprised of producer BRIAN GRAZER, director RON HOWARD, screenwriter AKIVA GOLDSMAN and actors RUSSELL CROWE and RENÉE ZELLWEGER—comes together to tell the quintessentially American story of a man who was not so much a great boxer as a great man who boxed his way out of darkness and defeat and into the stuff of immortality.
Academy Award® winner Russell Crowe stars as Jim Braddock, whose single-minded devotion to family and dignity became just as famous as his tricky feints and killer left hook. The story begins when Braddock — once full of promise — is forced into retirement from boxing after a run of bad luck, just as America itself is sliding into the most frightening hard economic times the nation has ever known. Facing imminent poverty, Jim wants only to do right by the woman who has always been his source of strength — his feisty wife Mae, played by Oscar® winner Renée Zellweger. At first, he takes a string of dead-end dock jobs that only seem to leave him poorer. But soon, the tightly-wedded couple are drowning in debt and emotionally devastated to see their children shivering in an unheated apartment amid the dead of a Jersey winter.
Then, as a result of the efforts of Jim’s indefatigable manager, Joe Gould (played by Golden Globe nominee PAUL GIAMATTI), Jim gets an out-of-the-blue, last-ditch shot to fight in Madison Square Garden—and more importantly, a chance to put some food on the table for those he loves. Despite being too old, too hungry and too injured to be considered a real contender — and in direct opposition to Mae’s strident fears for her husband’s life — Braddock nevertheless steps back into the ring without any training. Stunning the crowd and the media, he knocks out his rising-star opponent…thanks in part to a powerful hook developed during countless hours of dock work. But it doesn’t stop there. His career re-ignited, he starts to dig his family, victory by victory, out of their hole.
And the more he wins, the more Jim Braddock unwittingly becomes a folk hero, until it is as if every time he stands up to an opponent, he is standing up for the millions just like him battling to take care of their families and keep alive their sidelined dreams.
Then, finally, comes the match of Braddock’s life, as he boldly agrees to face off against world heavyweight champ Max Baer, a cocky powerhouse of a fighter with a punch so lethal he has already killed two men in the ring. Some say that Braddock will never even survive the match. Indeed, the odds are 10 to 1 in Baer’s favor as Braddock steps into his corner. But Jim Braddock has a different view: that this time he knows in his heart the incredible stakes for which he is fighting.
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1 The Inside Out
2 Shim-Me-Sha-Wobble
Performed by Miff Mole and his Molers
3 Mae
4 Change Of Fortune
5 Weehawken Ferry
6 Cold Meat Party
7 All Prayed Out
8 Tillie's Downtown Now
Performed by Bud Freeman and his Windy City Five
9 Three Bucks Twenty
10 Corn Griffin
11 Shoe Polish
12 Londonderry Air
Performed By Paul Giamatti
13 The Hope Of The Irish
14 Hooverville Funeral
15 Fight Day
16 Good As Murder
17 We’ve Got To Put That Sun Back In The Sky
Performed by Roane’s Pennsylvanians
18 No Contest
19 Pugilism
20 Bulldog Of Bergen
21 Big Right
22 9, 4, 2 Even
23 Cinderella Man
24 Turtle
25 Cheer Up! Smile! Nertz!
Performed by Eddie Cantor with Phil Spitalny’s music
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Jim Braddock Russell Crowe
Mae Braddoc Renée Zellweger
Joe Gould Paul Giamatti
Max Baer Craig Bierko
Jimmy Johnston Bruce McGill
Mike Wilson Paddy Considine
Directed and Produced by Ron Howard
Story and Screenplay by Cliff Hollingsworth
Screenplay by Akiva Goldsman
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